Okay, so since we're all fans of wargaming here, I presume many of you are familiar with the type of resource-accumulating and unit-making structures that form an inherent part of the interface for Real-time and turn-based strategy games like Command and Conquer, Warcradft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Heroes of Might and Magic, etc

Ore miners, slave workers, oil derricks, lumberjacks and the like collect resources - metal, dollars, wood, sheep - and in turn, those resources get made into battlefield-ready units at your friendly neighborhood barracks, war factories, airfields, and orbital shipyards.

My goal in this post is to get some brainstorming going on how to adapt this system to Brikwars.

Something like:construct/capture resource building, which brings in X amount of CP/random bricks per turn, then construct barracks/war factory to pump out reinforcements (kinda like an enhanced version of the mechanic and his "field construction" ability). And you have an obvious tactical incentive in the form of extra units (or lack thereof) to defend your own structures and capture/destroy those of your foes.

I'm sure plenty of you more experienced Brikwarriors have better ideas on how to implement these concepts in a more efficient, balanced, or bloodily-entertaining way, so please, I'd really like to hear them.

LEGO are like boobs - designed for kids, but adults have plenty of fun playing with them too.

This topic has come up a million times, and each time has crumbled under the weight of it's own rules.

The best idea would be to keep it simple. "worker" units that are mining would make attacks with tools vs. random objects (axe vs. tree, pick vs. stone, plasma collecter vs. reactor core etc.), and when the resource object is "killed" it spurts out 1d6 CP. Whether or not the minifigs need to actually carry resources to your production structures is up to you, but units would obviously be churned out of there.

I'd stick as close to the mechanik rules as much as possible (only building on your own turn, etc.) for simplicity's sake, but actually having to build whatever only using the bricks nearby doesn't make sense with the whole resource conversion thing. How else do you turn rocks into tires? So yeah, dig into your lego bin and build things up to however much CP you have accumulated.

For the most part, brikwars battles are too short to have time to build unit production structures in the field, so i suggest just having each "base" fully formed at the start of the game and pay for the structures as normal. If you DID build them in-field, I'd suggest just having a mechanik do it as normal.

Good luck with the attempt. There's a lot of cool things that can come out of this, but it would make each turn VERY long. It's part of why I suggest only building on the other person's turn.

IVhorseman wrote:The best idea would be to keep it simple. "worker" units that are mining would make attacks with tools vs. random objects (axe vs. tree, pick vs. stone, plasma collecter vs. reactor core etc.), and when the resource object is "killed" it spurts out 1d6 CP. Whether or not the minifigs need to actually carry resources to your production structures is up to you, but units would obviously be churned out of there.

I'd stick as close to the mechanik rules as much as possible (only building on your own turn, etc.) for simplicity's sake

That sounds like a workable idea.

IVhorseman wrote:but actually having to build whatever only using the bricks nearby doesn't make sense with the whole resource conversion thing. How else do you turn rocks into tires?

Like this:

IVhorseman wrote:For the most part, brikwars battles are too short to have time to build unit production structures in the field, so i suggest just having each "base" fully formed at the start of the game and pay for the structures as normal. If you DID build them in-field, I'd suggest just having a mechanik do it as normal.

I was thinking it might also help in situations where the players don't have a lot of LEGO to go around - have a pool of pre-built units/structures sitting off to the side, and then players can "build/summon/requisition/deploy" them once they have enough CP saved up.

If you're playing with LEGO-CAD battles, however (LeoCAD, LDraw, LDD), then of course it's fairly easy to just copy-paste pre-built units/structures from another file.

IVhorseman wrote:Good luck with the attempt. There's a lot of cool things that can come out of this, but it would make each turn VERY long. It's part of why I suggest only building on the other person's turn.

Thanks man, you've given me a lot to think about with this concept.

LEGO are like boobs - designed for kids, but adults have plenty of fun playing with them too.

What if the structure is the main objective?There's only one OT mine on the table, and whoever has control of it gets 1 unit of OT at the beginning of their turn. Whoever gets to X units of OT wins.Again, it's up to the discretion of the players as to whether or not they need to cart it back to base in order to score.

Just have bricks on the field that your troops can grab, and then have mechanics assemble them. As for creating infantry, have minifig parts that your medics and/or mad scientists can assemble. Battles over piles of torsos sounds like good fun to me!

A Ripperdoc / Frankenstein can spend his or her turns assembling body parts at the rate of two body parts put together per turn. So if a body and legs are just missing its head, it should take one turn to assemble with a suitable head. If the Ripperdoc / Frankenstein has to assemble legs to body and then head to body, it would take two turns. Once the minifig has been assembled, a dice roll is made:

1. Critical fail: The minifig comes to life but immediately attacks its creator.2-3. The lights are on but nobody's home - it's alive, but subject to the submissive speciality, and has to be lead by a unit commander in order to do anything like fight, march, etc.4+. A fully functioning minifig has been created which may act as normal for the side that created it.

Critical Success - The Almighty Bennie has smiled on you, and you have somehow created a Hero. Assuming there are now more than one Hero on that side, all the rules for multiple heroes on the same side immediately come into effect.

We can call the Specialist a FrankenFig, and the Speciality "RipperDok". Give them the same stats and base cost of the Medik and off we go:

The point of the game is to actually keep it running. Having multiple heroes means multiple heroic feats, means more time wasted trying to figure out how this particular hero can cause the most damage possible. Even with crankiness (and the extra half-second or so to remember to apply it each time), I feel like players would just find worthless units of their own to kill off left and right in order to maybe get a new hero or two. I'm not saying that's not balanced, but it IS kinda counter-intuitive, and I feel like a lot of games with this ability would just turn into a race of who could churn out the most heroes.